Lancer Team
Lancer Team was a two-Spartan unit of that was drawn from the ranks of to serve as covert, high-risk operatives during the . Consisting of Raniya-G135 and Shaiming-G231, Lancer Team survived deployments that had been deemed suicide missions and were one of the few Headhunter teams that lived to see the end of the war. In what was considered a rarity among Spartans, Raniya and Shaiming developed an intimate relationship and conceived a child together shortly after the war. They continued to serve as a team, carrying out deniable black operations missions against Covenant and Insurrectionist targets. Some years after the end of the war, both Raniya and Shaiming were killed during a pitched battle with the renegade Spartan Simon-G294 Operational History Lancer Team was one of seven Headhunter teams drawn from the ranks of Gamma Company during the unit's training on . One hundred trainees were handpicked for special training by Lieutenant Commander and Chief Petty Officer ; these candidates were then put through field exercises that were grueling, even by the intense standards of the Spartan program. The testing gradually weeded out candidates until only thirty remained. Of these, fourteen of the highest-scoring Spartans were paired into teams: Caster, Archer, Saber, Berserker, Rider, Assassin, and Lancer. The remaining candidates were held in reserve to replace the inevitable casualties from the extremely high-risk missions the Headhunters were meant to accomplish. Lancer's original members were Raniya-G135 and Caroline-G282. Having both scored highly in the field exercises, they were paired together by psychology specialists based on careful analysis of their mental profiles and behavioral traits. Further testing proved the effectiveness of the match-up and Lancer was soon deployed on the front lines of the Human-Covenant War. The team's first mission—the assassination of a chieftain deep behind enemy lines—was a critical success, as was their subsequent sabotage of Covenant supply routes. However, when Lancer was sent to hijack a pirate vessel en route to the embattled its perfect record turned sour. The pirate vessel turned out to be transporting a special operations unit who surprised and drove off the Spartans. Raniya was heavily injured but managed to escape back to Lancer's exfiltration craft; Caroline was killed while buying time for her teammate's retreat. While Raniya recuperated from her injuries, Lancer's ONI handlers drew from the Headhunter's already-depleted reserve forces to bring the team back up to full strength. Shaiming-G231, one of the lowest-performing candidates to have remained in the Headhunter pool, was called up to replace Caroline as Lancer and most other Spartan units were withdrawn to to participate in humanity's last-ditch defense of its homeworld. Raniya and Shaiming met on , where they were briefed for a mission to infiltrate and destroy a Covenant battlecruiser. Although the recovered Raniya responded to her new partner with the same respect she would have afforded any fellow Spartan, she was unsure of how to handle the loss of her synergy with Caroline. Shaiming, for his part, kept his distance partially out of respect for Raniya's loss and partially out of a fear that he wouldn't be able to be an effective teammate. Lancer hijacked a and flew it into the cruiser's hangar, where they fought off the ship's security teams before advancing further into the ship. After overloading the cruiser's weapon systems, they detonated an anti-matter charge within its core and fled back to the hangar bay. Although the two escaped the doomed ship in , a stray plasma blast crippled Raniya's fighter and left her stranded dangerously close to the exploding cruiser. Shaiming didn't notice his teammate's absence until it was too late; the cruiser detonated before he could turn back. Raniya managed to survive by shielding her body with debris and was instantly returned to active service; nevertheless, the incident only weakened the Headhunters' tenuous bonds with each other. Following the attack on the cruiser, Lancer was deployed alongside several regular Gamma squads to battle Covenant land forces. During the fighting, Shaiming learned that his friend Simon-G294 had been declared missing in action, presumed dead during a mission to . Although he hesitated to confide in Raniya, she noticed his grief and chose to approach him about it. As more and more Gamma Spartans were killed in the fighting the two Headhunters grew closer in order to cope with the loss of their friends. As UNSC forces were beaten back across the planet, Raniya and Shaiming were deployed to North Africa, where they assisted Commander with reconnaissance missions on the Covenant dig site around the ruins of . Following the arrival of , Lancer was one of the advance teams dispatched to the Covenant-held city of prior to the .